A blog dedicated to my thoughts on politics, economics, philosophy, religion, and more.

Tag Archives: Occupy Wall Street

The architecture of liberty is comprised of the same simple concepts illustrated by the Declaration of Independence — that man has a right to his own life, that individuals are sovereign entities entitled to the pursuit of their own happiness so long as such pursuits heed to the sovereignty of others. This individualism defines the standard for which society is to be evaluated. This is why the saying goes “justice is blind” in that the rule of law applies equally to all men, regardless of race, creed, religion, or stature; why we are free to buy or not buy goods based on our own needs and desires (i.e. free market capitalism); why we value such ideas as privacy, free speech, and uncoerced association. All of these stem from one singular concept: the sovereignty of the individual.

But the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement seems to have done away with individualism in their rhetoric. Instead, they plead for the alleviation of society’s needs, the woes of the 99%, the voice of the community. To the occupiers, it seems, America is a homogeneous organic body working in harmony towards a goal of loosely defined progress. Society is thus much like a symphony with individuals working together towards a single composition. When this holistic thinking becomes the standard of evaluation, it doesn’t seem so outrageous to sacrifice some parts to save the whole. After all, wouldn’t any sane person opt to surgically remove a cancerous tumor in order to keep living if given the choice?

We see this today with the words echoed in metropolis centers across America by the OWS — that the top earners in this country have unfairly acquired too much wealth; that corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars worth of capital they should be spending; that more social services like free Health Care are readily practical if only taxes were high enough, and so they should be — all in the name of society’s progress.

In the wake of Progressivism lies the shattered rights of individuals. The rich man suffers from the premise that he is not entitled to his wealth, society is. Businesses suffer from the premise that the jobs they provide aren’t theirs to adjust in times of economic turmoil, they are entitlements to society. Every taxpayer suffers from the premise that if they sacrifice their own happiness and an ever-growing portion of their paycheck to the state, its for the (morally) greater happiness of society.

Progressivism views individuals as a collective and treats it as such. As a result, liberty’s true definition gets muddled, sacrifice becomes a moral virtue, and individual rights become easy to brush aside. America was founded on the ideal of individualism because man’s right to his own life was an axiom based in nature, not a dated and malleable concept. Until the OWS movement embraces that axiom, their message will always be hard to swallow by individuals who value liberty.

On Wednesday, Harvard’s campus newspaper The Harvard Crimsonran an opinion piece by the President addressing the economy and student loan debt. Unfortunately, the op-ed was riddled with flawed logic, inaccurate statements, and deficient ideology that the American people shouldn’t endure.

First of all, it is worth noting that state-centric approach the President has taken to solve the woes of our time. Speaking to his jobs proposals that did not fair well on the hill, the President said “the best way to attack our economic challenges and put hundreds of thousands of people back to work is through bold action in Congress.” The idea, and the hubris needed to accept it, that the federal government wields sufficient power over the fourteen and a half trillion dollar U.S. economy and can, at will, micromanage it back to health is a bit disconcerting. Such ideas stem from overconfidence in government action and a flawed understanding of a market economy.

Hubris aside, the President bolsters the case for his jobs bill by repeating a faslehood tackled by the watchdog group FactCheck.org. He says:

[…] it’s been so disappointing to see Republicans in Congress block jobs bills from going forward—bills that independent economists say could create millions of jobs though the kinds of proposals supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past.

According to FactCheck.org, “the median estimate in a survey of 34 economists showed 288,000 jobs could be saved or created over two years under the president’s plan.”

Secondly in his piece, the President addressed student loan debt with this:

Living with that much debt forces you to make some tough choices. And when a big chunk of every paycheck goes towards student loans, it isn’t just painful for you—it’s painful to our economy and harmful to our recovery.

Here, the President is insinuating that the economy is suffering from a lack of spending in the private sector as graduated college students make down payments on the loans with money they would have otherwise spent. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama (and for his Keynesian cohorts), that is not the case. According to economic data, personal consumption is at much higher levels today than prior to the recession. And furthermore, consumption is not the engine of an economy, it is production that makes wealth. We should be removing all barriers for the producers of this economy to continue and expand production. With one of the highest corporate income taxes in the world, mounting regulation, and massive deficit spending, accompanied with a growing movement in the downtown regions of many U.S. cities which demand further sacrifice from producers, it is no wonder why the economy is stagnant.

Progressives, such as President Obama believe in a perverted understanding of liberty. According to them, liberty was not just the freedom from oppression by others, it was the freedom to achieve the most in one’s life — that all peoples were entitled to explore themselves and grow to be the best they can be. From this shore, progressives justified extraordinary breaches of individual liberty including the establishment of the welfare state, extensive regulation of commerce, and atrocious distributions of wealth.

The President seeks to accomplish the same thing as he echos the cries of the Occupy Wall Street hippies for the wealthy to “pay their fair share” in taxes in order to help the country eliminate its deficit problems; as he designs to spend more money we do not have on stimulus projects that do not work.

The President should not get carte blanche to propagate half-truths and expired economic theories. The President can do us all a favor by doing two things: instruct the federal government to move out of the way of the producers of this country and let the marketplace restore itself, and reconcile his progressivism with Jeffersonian liberty in favor of the later.